Vehicle History Sheets

The story behind the history sheets

Penn Bradly was the Club Historian for more than 50 years. His vehicle
history sheets were started when the Club was in its infancy with the aim to log
every known Armstrong Siddeley vehicle into a set of master records (ie. individual history sheets), concentrating predominately on Australian Armstrong
Siddeley vehicles. More than 5,000 Armstrong Siddeley vehicles have been
individually catalogued. The information has been entered onto the vehicle
history sheets of Penn's design, the design being progressively refined and
standardised in about 1996. It's interesting to note that the Rolls Royce,
Daimler and Aston Martin Car Clubs have subsequently asked Penn to assist them
to establish their own club's vehicle records.

Initially, every (then
current) Club member was asked to provide details of their vehicles. At the same
time Penn also started to write down details of any Armstrong Siddeley vehicle
that he saw, even if it were no more than the basic model (not year), colour and
number plate. If the vehicle happened to be parked, the old-format registration
label also provided him with the engine number which was also recorded. This
skimpy data was entered onto a fresh history sheet in the hope (mostly achieved)
that more data for that particular vehicle would eventually be found.

In
1961 Penn persuaded Buckle Motors of Sydney to lend him their sales records of
all Armstrong Siddeley vehicles that they sold new dating back to 1931. Their
trade-in records were also made available and these were also logged in. In many
instances the trade-in cars were not from their original owners. This (then)
still fairly current data was supplied with various embargos from Buckles - well
ahead of today's privacy laws!

In many cases data was collected on previously unknown vehicles. If the
engine number was obtained, Penn wrote to Armstrong Siddeley Motors in England
who would look up the factory records and send the details for the club's use.
Armstrong Siddeley Motors did this countless times in the period 1962 - 1971
with one particular individual, the late Denzil Lusher kindly doing this in his
lunch hour. A huge amount of data was obtained and it was surprising to find
that some cars came from places like Venezuela, Germany, Accra, Singapore
etc.

Penn's next quest was to extract data from other Australian supporting
dealers' records. Stokoe Motors was helpful but wanted Penn to come to
Melbourne for a couple of weeks to comb through their records. However, whenever Penn was in Melbourne he would manage to find the
odd couple of hours to visit Stokoe Motors and extract whatever information he
could.

The other two main supporting dealers were British and Australian Motors of
Brisbane whose Armstrong Siddeley representation dated back to 1919 or 1920 and
Southern Motors of Adelaide. Unfortunately most of British and Australian Motors
records were lost in the huge Brisbane flood of c1955. Penn was still able to
obtain personal memories from the directors and he had the opportunity to
extract what he could from their service records post 1955/56. This helped but
it was far from complete. Quite a lot of data was also obtained from
Queensland-based owners. In contrast, Southern Motors were totally
uncooperative. Penn got what he could from Adelaide's Armstrong Siddeley owners
with a lot of assistance from the late John Bull.

The only other importer/dealer was West End Motors of Perth who imported only
a handfull of 18HP utilities and two 346 Sapphires and whose business had ceased
trading long before the Club was formed. Armstrong Siddeley Motors confirmed
that their total sales were less than 35. Penn collected information from
Western Australian owners whenever the opportunity arrived.

In 1964 the Club managed to get the New South Wales Vehicle Licensing
Authority (now the RTA) to manually type a list of owners' names and addresses
and car details for the Club from their records. The list was a huge benefit to
the Club, with the fee of (about) 50 pounds a real bargain considering the
amount of typing involved. This project not only yielded a lot of fresh data but
gained the Club enough new members to easily recoup the cost. Vehicle
registration authorities in other States were not prepared to do what the New
South Wales authorities had done but they were willing to answer a specific
question in detail for a modest fee per enquiry that was personally paid for by
Penn.

Penn also tried to obtain the use of records from Reo Motors in Auckland, IMS
of Wellington and Archibald's Garage of Christchurch (all in New Zealand). The
only response was a photocopy of Archibald's records for the Sapphires as they
had destroyed their 16/18HP records. Penn also tried to gain access to the
records of the now defunct Bangkok dealer/importer Emgee Car Co but they would
not reply to any of the several letters that were sent.

All of this sleuthing was done without knowledge of the Armstrong Siddeley
Motors exit records. When Penn became aware of those records sometime in the
early 1980's, the Armstrong Siddeley Owners Club photocopied the Sapphire sheets
for the 10,086 cars involved. A lot of fresh data was able to be extracted
including details of cars that had been previously unknown and would otherwise
have been lost forever. The exercise was repeated during the 1990's for the over
12,000 16/18HP vehicles. This was simultaniously helpful and depressing as so
many cars from the 1940's have still never been located. Penn's ASOC counterpart, Peter Sheppard, was ever helpful and a worthwhile contact.

Club member, John Purcell, has developed a Microsoft Access database that now
holds a copy of all of Penn's original handwritten records.

We need your help

Perhaps you own, or know somebody who owns, or often
see an Armstrong Siddeley vehicle. We would very much appreciate it if you could
refer the owner to this website. They must of course understand that any information provided
will be added to (and distributed with) copies of the Club's vehicle database.
Details about non-Australian-based vehicles are very welcome.